September Happenings

I wanted to give you all a little update on some things around our company. As most of you know, I returned last week from a service call in Sarisota,FL. I was working on a Lucas Horizontal Boring Mill that used to be at STADCO in L.A. It has a GE 1050MC control and is now owned by Mustang Vacuum. They will use it to make their vacuum chambers. Their end product allows quick aluminum plating of plastic auto headlight lenses for customers around the world. Another use is plating auto wheels. They can apparently chrome plate an auto wheel in about 90 seconds! Dry! They've been selling to places like California where the toxic chemicals used on conventional plating is a problem.

Our retrofit schedule is very tight again. We are currently finishing up putting a used OTA on a LeBlond Regal at R.E. Atkinson. This project was completely installed and powered up by Andy and Basem while I was in Florida. The control came off of a nearly identical machine that was scrapped by R.A. Industries last year.

We are creating a Hydraulic Test Stand control for Circor in Corona. Jeff is finishing up the design after a slight setback last week. It turns out that the new line of low cost PLC's from AB is not quite ready for prime time. We'll revert to the Automation Direct/Koyo unit again.

Jeff is also rewriting PLC code for a gun drill for Alarin Hinge in Commerce. This new, custom machine had PLC code written by a "non motion control" guy and needs extensive rework. Jeff has much of the work done and needs to work on the HMI now.

Also, we just started a new lathe retrofit project at Circor in Sylmar. This will be a FS0iT-D control and a new spindle drive on a large Boehringer/VDF lathe.

Some of you remember Brian Crawford, who used to be a partner at Norotos. He is alive and well, living in Flagstaff. I've been there a couple of times to work on his machines and we keep in touch. Some of you may know that he is an experienced motorcycle "Trials" rider and competed well into his 70's. Now, it seems, he has a new project. You can read about it here:  http://horndesigns-brian.tumblr.com/

Pressure Sensitive Film

This might be old news to some of you but check out this Fuji product:

http://www.sensorprod.com/pr/md/index.php?mcode=prmd052011

The link that led me to this says it is new. Looks pretty interesting. I'm a little puzzled by the range: 7 to 43,000 PSI. It looks from the sample that the area from 20 to 3000 would be pretty hard to resolve.

Heidenhain opens a new office

Check this out:

http://www.heidenhain.us/enews/stories_0411/news-el.php

It looks like Heidenhain is back in the L.A. area. I don't know what that means for us as far as parts go, but they must think things are picking up.

We should all look this good at 92

Some of you might remember Ben Frank, formerly of Bullard. I have had the pleasure of working with Ben occasionally for most of my 40+ years in the machine tool business. Today was one of those days! He is alive and well AND still working. We worked on a machine at S&S Precision today. He drove himself down from Ventura County.

Cryogenic Coolant

http://www.mmsonline.com/articles/the-400-difference

I don't really mean for this Blog to become a forum for new MAG ideas, but this one is too interesting to pass up. Many years ago, I fixed a Monarch 10"EE lathe at USC that was being used for this kind of research. MAG now has it for sale.

I especially like the part where the machine remains dry to walk on and how tool life is ten times better in some circumstances.

Volumetric Compensation in FIVE axes!

Just when you thought nothing ever happens in our industry, we realize that:
1) MAG (Cincinnati) is still alive and well.
2) They are actively researching new techniques.
3) There is still a lot of money changing hands in our industry.

Check this out:
http://www.engineeringexchange.com/group/machine_tool/forum/topics/new-system-simultaneously

I was distressed to see that Fanuc was not a part of this consortium. That might not bode well for our recent Fanuc upgrade quote at Triumph Structures. Maybe this is why they prefer Siemens.

Stuxnet

I'm sure that most of you have heard of the Stuxnet Computer Virus by now. Here is an article that goes into much more detail than I've seen before. This is pretty ominous for us because the target of this virus was actually 9000 Siemens Inverters! We don't see this type of connection or communication on our machine tools, but we might some day. Last year, Jeff and I were asked to work on a large (1000 foot long) continuous vulcanization machine in Santa Maria. Its PLC controlled the speeds of 17 inverters along the line and seems like the kind of thing that could be susceptible to this kind of attack.

Something to think about.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/26/secret-agent-crippled-irans-nuclear-ambitions/